Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See

This is a story of friendship - the life story of Lily and how she seeks and shares love.

I'm going to share up front that there is more intimacy in this book than I usually read - this book is a little too graphic for me, and I felt it was gratuitous. The bedroom scenes did nothing to further the message of the novel.

In this book we meet Lily at age 5 and travel through life to her 40s, then meet her again in her 80s. I felt that the foreshadowing was incredibly well done - Lily tells the reader about things two steps in advance, which perfectly whets your appetite. She constantly has the reader yearning to know more, meet a new person, or discover a truth about love.

The climactic conflict in the book is very predictable, but the emotions surrounding it are detailed and moving. There are some fun, unexpected twists in the plot.

One of the main focuses and repeated themes in the book is the tradition of foot-binding that was prevalent in China:

While it's disgusting and sickening on many levels, it was considered beautiful and girls whose feet were not bound were not marriageable. These women were not able to walk very far or ever run again.

The main profit I took away from this book was the time I spent thinking about the differences between physical and emotional abuse. Lily discusses both in powerful ways and helps us to see the resulting agony - which is especially poignant because both types of abuse are so completely unnecessary and wrong, and both are inflicted on a humble, suffering woman.